Film

“MARE NOSTRUM – A Concert. A Journey.” is an intercultural dialogue that is conducted as an artistically free documentary. Students from the Scuola Vivante are preparing for a concert with Jordi Savall and his 18-piece ensemble from 11 different countries by asking him and his fellow musicians the questions they have always wanted to have answered. The musicians talk about their lives and the places they call home. They talk about their instruments and their love of music.

Working together and interacting with music creates connections.

A month after the concert, a school trip takes the students to their partner school, the ‘école vivante’, in the High Atlas region of Morocco. The young people and the staff travelling with them set off, leaving the familiar behind, to come into contact with a part of that world that is expressed through music at the concert. The result of days spent on the road – travelling through Switzerland, France, Spain and Morocco – is a travelogue from the young people‘s perspective.

The music of Jordi Savall accompanies the travellers like a protecting hand. From then on, in the changing images of the landscape, the music unfolds in a new way and it is as though it finally reaches its full dimension on this journey.

In the film MARE NOSTRUM, the directors Michelle Brun and Stefan Haupt weave Mediterranean music and the discussions with the world experienced by the young travellers – whose thoughts can be heard off-camera in a playfully humorous and moving way. It is an all-embracing work of art, which shows the dialogue of three generations of the three largest monotheistic world religions around the Mediterranean Sea, while striving to find inner and outer peace.